The Real Toy Industry - LIVE Interview with Bobby Vala of Valaverse and Analog Toys

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We gotta get back to the past To the 20th century Digging through the bubble wrap Into your memories [00:00:14] Speaker ?: Like us, the collector He's protecting what we find Remember to save him better [00:00:23] Speaker 2: Keep us safe for time This is killer [00:00:31] Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, no [00:00:37] Speaker 3: Hello, everybody, and welcome To the special Sunday night Retroblasting live stream I'm gonna get everybody into their proper driving and piloting positions here For this stream Okay, everybody, hope you're doing well tonight We have a fun discussion That I think this is gonna be enlightening I was talking with Bobby and Tony I talk with Bobby and Tony pretty regularly on separate, you know, separate chats and sometimes in a group chat And we were just talking about, you know, the distribution and action figures We were probably talking about Action Force at the time from Battleverse because, you know, Bobby's making action figures right now from overseas in the traditional way and they're on their way over and all that stuff And I thought, you know, Bobby kind of wants to I'm speaking for you like you're not here, Bobby, but I'm looking right at you So Bobby said he wanted to talk about, you know, some of this toy industry stuff and I was like, yeah, that'd be kind of cool Like get somebody who's actually He's a toy maker, he's a toy sculptor He actually is still currently making figures in this market with the challenges both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic Or mid-pandemic, whatever you want to call it And then also get another lifelong toy collector, which is Tony Who has been collecting in a completely different market And I thought between the three of us, we can kind of Talk this whole thing through and leaning on, you know, Bobby, your experience Kind of figure out How we got here, where we are, you know What the last 10 years have really looked like So Timothy Ward says Someone is currently making toys, what a notion Jeff, thank you for the super chat He says, slightly off topic, when do we see Michael in Action Force as the archivist tech guy Official word on that I don't want to be in Action Force I would rather spend my chips Getting more deserving people in Action Force So like, I won't tell you the different people that I've recommended to Bobby That I thought would be cool for Action Force I'm not above being a fanboy and recommending people For Action Force I did it But I don't want to be in Action Force It is a very special toy line With real veterans and real military people I I'm cool not being in part That would just All right [00:03:22] Speaker 1: So I wasn't laughing at you, Michael I just read Laser Pants Super Chat [00:03:25] Speaker 3: Laser Pants Thank you for the super chat He says, hello from Alex's basement I just breathed on his hot toys [00:03:32] Speaker 2: Oh man That might be the next name of an adult film Oh yeah, yeah Let the memeing begin Hello from Alex's basement Okay, so I was thinking, breathe on my hot toys But, you know [00:03:51] Speaker 3: I'm going to be a bright, shining staff Big staff Okay, so So I was taking the way back machine To kind of orient myself for this conversation Both of you keep me honest I was working with a guy for a long time At my newspaper job He was the photographer I was the Clark Kent reporter guy And He was a big, big, big Star Wars collector Like, he collected all of it All the modern stuff It didn't matter what it was He had a whole Three and three quarter inch room, you know And he He bought everything Like, he was more interested in the modern stuff Than he was in Completing his vintage collection Like, he was all in on the new stuff Which is great, you know And so he was always going on toy hunts Between his assignments So he would, like, stop on different The three different Walmarts Kmarts And a Toys R Us on the way back From wherever he went Back to the newspaper So this was around 2008 By this time So I'd known him about Three years at that point He'd gotten some stuff for me Over the course of that Because I was more picky with the modern But he would find it And then get me a few And then I'd pay him back Stuff like that We're in 2008 And They're in the midst of The Indiana Jones revival at Hasbro You know, Crystal Skull has come out They're doing the action figure run For Crystal Skull And It's Getting into, like, the Last Crusade And Temple of Doom waves And he's not collecting them himself But he's looking for them for me And I'm picking him up As he gets them And paying him back We get to the Temple of Doom wave And I can't find him anywhere And he finally He was He knew all the haunts in Atlanta Like, he knew He had a system He knew where to go He knew who to talk to And finally one day He texted me And he said Hey, can you meet me at I don't remember where And I said Yeah, sure And I drove out there And he had found them And he had found them At a drugstore It was like a Kroger Or a Rite Aid Or something Like They all had I still got the card back They have the drugstore Kroger You know Pharmacy Price tags on them And apparently That's where all of these Were ending up Two years later I believe it was two Whenever the The vintage collection Bespin Han Solo Finally came out That was one That was highly anticipated Finally came out On the vintage card back And he called me At work I had moved on To work at another I worked at UPS corporate At that point He called me And we had like An hour long Phone conversation Where he was telling me How impossible It had now become In the last 24 months Since that Temple of Doom Thing happened To get these figures And he said The Bespin Han wave Is just not showing up And he finally Had to buy a whole Case of it Off of Hasbro Toy shop Or something Just to get That run of figures And that was the Beginning of this Pattern That I saw So Bobby Based on your Experience Am I right In that timeline Do you happen To know Like when Distribution If it started To change Or if things Started to shift Because this was A pre This was a Pre-fall Of Toys R Us Era This was still All the major Retailers Were still around So Do you happen To know If there were Any shifts At that time [00:07:21] Speaker 2: Not that I Recall No I mean Just trying To think Yeah There was Nothing Nothing That We heard Of You know Or that I remember Coming to Life As far As Affecting Distribution At that Time [00:07:41] Speaker 1: Now [00:07:43] Speaker 3: Would we I guess My question Then is All of us Are We've talked About this Before in the Background That The toy aisles Have looked Pretty barren Lately Even before COVID Like even Before COVID You'd go in And it'd be Like one Black series Hanging off The peg And you know What can we Attribute to that How does this Work Bobby Walk And did I Call you Tony a second Ago And I Apologize If I Did I hope I didn't I don't Think You did Okay We're just Going to Ride Right Back That Bobby Walk us Through In your Both direct Experience Now And also Then How this Retail Distribution Works In the Modern Age [00:08:24] Speaker 2: All right Yeah I could Do that I can Give you My Experiences And then Pass them Off as Modern Day Facts Now If you Want But [00:08:34] Speaker 3: No No You Couch Those However You Like Sir However You Like [00:08:39] Speaker 2: So As far As Distribution Goes It It All Gets Manufactured Over In China But Now A lot Of The toy Companies Are Expanding Where They're Doing Manufacturing So [00:08:54] Speaker ?: So [00:08:54] Speaker 2: Hazard Started Looking At India Mexico Shoot What Was Oh Vietnam Was The big One That Came To Light They Were Bringing In You know Some Really Cheap Labor Which Is Unfortunate And That's That's The Thing That's The Sad Part Is That You know Because You're Fighting For To Make The Cheapest Products So That You Can Capitalize On You know Profiting [00:09:20] Speaker 3: Right [00:09:20] Speaker 2: You know They're Always Looking For What Is The Cheaper Labor And You know China Is Still Very Cheap But It Started Getting To The Point Where Like No You know So much Stuff Is Being Manufactured Over Here We Need To You know Raise Our Prices And Get A little Bit More Money And Then That's When You know Companies Start Venturing Out But You know There's The Pacific Ocean Between These Continents So Everything Is You know The Majority Of Everything Is Going To Come Over To The West Coast As Far As Ports And You know The Port Of You know Long Beach In LA And Then There's Another One A little Further South There's I Think There's Six Major Ports In California So Deliveries Are Going To Come There And Then They're Just Going To Get Processed And Now I Know That Back In The 80s Hasbro Had A Distribution Plant I Believe In Maine Because Some Of The Steel Brigades When You Ordered When You Did The Original Mail Order For The Steel Brigade They Took The Figures From China And Then They Put The File Cards In So It Processed There And Then Packaged And Sent Out From Maryland Or Maine Sorry [00:10:35] Speaker 1: I [00:10:36] Speaker 2: Believe Now Hasbro Has A Facility In Pennsylvania And I Think They Have More Throughout So What's Going To Happen Is You're Going To Get A Large Distribution Coming To The West Coast But Then It's Going To Filter Out Obviously Now What's Going To Happen Is You And I We're On The East Coast We're Always Going To Find Toys Last Because Just Geography It's Going To Come To The West Coast They Don't It Doesn't Really Need To Go To Like A Big Hub Like Hasbro Hub And If It Does It Can It's Splinter Out Really Quick To Target Walmart And All The Other Stores So Right Like Laserpants.com Always Has Stock Really Quick Here I Order From Laserpants.com All You Know It's Going To Start To Shift Throughout The Rest Of The Country And Then It's Going To Go To Those You Know Maybe Some Stuff Goes Over To That Hub In That Hasbro House In Pennsylvania And Then Filters Out Through There I Know That Living In Rhode Island It's Like Very Rarely Do I See Stuff Like I Can't Even Say I Ever See Stuff Before Someone Else Stuff Right But It's Also Like If I Even Get Stuff Like It's Rare I Remember When The Evil Two Pack The Master Of The Universe Target Exclusive That Pack I Forget What It's Actually But That Showed Up Before They Became Peg Warmers It Showed Up Like When It Was Still Hot Right And Like I Couldn't Believe It And I Grab One Off The Shelf And A Guy From Me And I Was Like Here You Go Dude You're I'm Not Going To Pay You I'm Not [00:12:21] Speaker ?: Going [00:12:21] Speaker 2: To Pay Me To Take This Product That I Haven't Even Bought Yet So Here You Go Right It Was Like That You Know That Fierceness Because Nothing Nothing Comes Out That Way So As Far Distribution Goes That Into LA And You See Now There's A Backup Of Over 100 Ships Just Waiting So I Didn't You Know Already That That Journey That's Like A 50 60 Day Delivery Point Doing It That That Current Way And Then That's Not Counting Who Knows How Long The Ships Are Going To Sit In The Port For So I Was Like I Don't We Can Do That You Know People Been Waiting Like I Need To Get This Stuff Here Whatever It Takes You Know Get The Stuff Here As Quickly As Possibly We Found An Alternative Shipping Method That Kind Of Just Came Around You Know A Shipping Carrier Set This Up And It's Bypassing That Like It's Still Coming In Through California But Instead Of Going To The Ports It's Going To Its Own Hub Which Is Away From Those So Then It Comes And Then That Will Then Come And Go Directly To Me In Rhode Island So And Then It'll Come To Me And Then I'll Distribute It From There So That's You Know That's How That's Going To Work But Also There Are Ways Where You Can Get Products Shipped To The Port Of Boston I Know It's Much More Expensive Because Of The Roots That It Has To Take Think Of Geography But You Know That's Kind Of One Of Those Things But Like Luckily Hopefully The Option That We Have Now Being Set Up For It It's Like Almost Double The Amount Which Sucks Because It's Like You Know That Eats Into You Know The Profit Margins Which Then I've Already Rolled Into Series Two And Now I'm Rolling Into Series Three Which We're Starting Now So That Kind Of Hurts But It's Like At This Point It Was Much More Important To Get The Product Here As Quickly As Possible Rather Than To Save Money Right You Know That's Kind Of Kind Of It For Like My My Experiences As Far As Distribution Goes [00:14:43] Speaker 3: Right The Thing That I Think Is Weird Me Out And This Where I'm Bringing Tony Officially Into This Discussion And Then It Just It Becomes A Free For All I Think At That Point It's It's The Soviet Grocery Store Look Of The Isles Over The Last Several Years Even You Know Now They're Trying To Blame All Of This On COVID And It's Like Yeah But Guys It Looked This Way Before COVID Like For The Retailers Are And It's Like Well By Now Wouldn't The Retailers And The Manufacturers You Know The Toy Companies Have Gotten Together To Try And Solve This Issue So Back When Rogue One Came Out 20 What Was That 2016 There Was A Black Series Jyn Erso That Was Exclusive To Kmart And She Was In The Goggles And Poncho From The Planet With All The Downpouring Rain On It Where Her Father Get Killed Or Whatever And It Came In Like A Diorama Box And She Was Posed On Like A Rock In The Window Box Or Whatever I Never Once Saw Those Here In Atlanta Nowhere Did I Ever See Them I Didn't See Them In Tennessee I Didn't See Them In South Carolina I Didn't See Them Anywhere But Several Months Later Because People Were Showing Off On Social Media Hey I Just Got You Know The Jenner So From Whatever Kmart Exclusive And Then I Find Out That There Is A Kmart A Friend Of Mine Posted That There Was A Kmart That Was Going Out Of Business Because Now Kmart Were Like You Know In Bankruptcy Or Whatever They're Going Out Of Business And It Had A Shelf Like A Shelf That Was Like 70 70 Jen Or So Long Four High And Five Deep Of Just That Exclusive At That One Store And He Was Like Out West Somewhere Like He Was Like I Don't Know Pick A Place Kansas Colorado Something Like That Like It Was West Of Me And I Been Hearing About These Kinds Of Distribution Kerfuffles Constantly So Tony Has Has Told Me Several Times About Things In Australia Product Lines That Are Supposed To Be Sold In The You Know Many Markets Including The United States Action Figure Lines We're Having Very Difficult Times Finding Them Here And Tony Who's Not Even Collecting Some Of Them Will Go Into A Shop And This Is Where I Want Tony I Want You To Jump You Are That We I Mean They're Like Unicorns Here They're Like Bigfoot I Mean It's Like You Know [00:17:29] Speaker 1: Yeah I Mean And I Was Literally Down In Perth A Couple Of Days Ago I Flew Down A New Car So Flew Got Down In The Morning Picked Up The Car And Then The First Thing I Did Was Drove Around To About Five Different No Way More Five About Nine Different Stores So I Went To A Big Toy Store That At One Point Used To [00:17:51] Speaker ?: To [00:17:51] Speaker 1: To be Toys R Us And Then Toys R Us Closed Down It Just Reopened Under A Different Name And It's Still A Big Toys And Then A load Of Department Stores And You'll Remember We were Having A chat About This Probably A Year Ago And I Said To You The Profit Director Testro Figures That Were Hard To Get I Found This Toy Store In Perth That Had Like A Dozen Of Them On The Shelf I Went Into That Same Toy Store And They Still Have A Dozen Maybe There's 11 Now Maybe They Haven't Put Them On Clearance Or Anything Like That But Gio Joe Classified For Some Reason We Don't Have Any Of These Store Exclusive Stuff Even I Didn't Even See Empty Pegs That Had The Labels There So There's Probably Some Kind Of Different Arrangement With Target Australia And Target US For The Cobra Island Stuff But All The Other Gio Stuff Is In Abundance On Store Shelves Earlier Releases I Would Say They're In Abundance And I Saw Them 12 Months Ago And I Go Back To The Same Stores And They're Still There They Just Don't Seem To Sell But Then When It Comes To Black Series I Mean Star Wars Is Popular Everywhere So Black Series We Can Get That Here I Was Finding There's We Have A Chain Of Stores In Australia Called Zing Pop Culture So They Do A Lot Of You Know They Do The DC Classics All Sorts Of Different Action Figures Of Things Are Standalone So I Think I Went To Three Of Them But Each One I Went To Had Completely Different Stock And They Were Within A 10 15 Minute You Know Three Different Malls Within Sort Of 15 Minutes Of Each Other Completely Different Stock At Each Store I Couldn't Understand But I Going Back To Pre COVID Times You Know And I Completely Agree COVID Did Not Start This Distribution Issue It Was Like This Before Hand Right I Can Remember The Force Awakens And Then Certainly Rogue One As Well I Was Working In The Middle East Living In Thailand On My Time Off And There Was A Toys R Us In The City Where I Lived Not A Huge Toys R Us It Was Insider But When Those Two Films Came Out There Was Tons And Tons Of Stock On The Shelves For Rogue One Force Awakens [00:20:26] Speaker 3: Yeah [00:20:27] Speaker 1: And Then I Don't Know What Happened It Just Died Off [00:20:32] Speaker 3: Maybe [00:20:34] Speaker 1: I Mean Certainly With Star Wars You Can Blame Part Of That On The Last Jedi If You Want But Nothing Seemed To Recover After That Disaster [00:20:45] Speaker 3: Yeah Yeah And That Was Around I Guess That Was A Few Years After Bobby I Heard You On Another Channel Recently Discussing How It Was I Believe You Said It Was Winter Soldier Marvel Legends Suddenly Kick Marvel Legends Into The Stratosphere For Retailers And Suddenly They Wanted Those Really Badly Like Marvel Legends Made Their Radar Or Something Like That [00:21:08] Speaker 2: Yeah I Mean Legends Was Always Big Now You Know I I Heard Someone A While Back Say That You Know That Retailers Don't Care About Collectors And That Makes Sense If You Were Kicked Out Of The Toy Industry In 2014 But That Was Before The Real Hot Trend Of Collecting Starting Now Right Listen Collecting You Know It's Like Yeah Like Okay DC Wrestling Yeah They're They're Parts Of The Pie The Majority Of The Pie Is Marvel And Star Wars Let's Not Forget That So You Know If You Fear To Say That You Know DC Figures And He-Man Figures Are Popular But You're You're A Small Fish In A Pond With A Ton Of Eight Pound Bass So Yeah Like That That Time Like Yes The Retailers Were Taking Legends But It Was Like We Were Only Doing Shoot Maybe Three Waves Of Legends A Year You Know Do You Know A Classic Wave Maybe A Movie Wave You Know And Toys Rust Was Getting Just The X-Men They Were Taking One Maybe Two Waves A Year Of X-Men So I Think It Was It Was Guardians Are Winter Soldier Around That Same Time I Don't Remember The Exact Dates I Think Guardians Came Out In 2014 Which Would Make Sense If You Thought That Retailers Don't Care About Collectors Because That's When Maybe Your Lack Of Knowledge Goes Till But Collecting Took A Huge Spike After That Right And Then It Was Retailers Were Like It's All We Want Legends Legends Legends Legends Legends You Know Why Because In 2015 They Told Us We Want More Give Us More That's When We Rebranded 4 Inch To Legends Because They Wanted Legends We Came Out With Two New Segments The 12 Inch And The One To One Roleplay Stuff Which Then Launched In 2016 So I Was Working On Those Lines In 2015 They Were Asking For That Stuff Then It Got So Hot That We Made New Segments So Yes Retailers Cared About Collectors If You Said Retailers Don't Care About Collectors You Just An Idiot Like You An Absolute Idiot Or You Just Missed The Boat You Know So Now It's Like That's All Retail Cares About And Yes Retail Created A New Spot By The DVDs That Has All Collector Stuff But That's Also The Stuff That's Age Graded Different Right It's Not Necessarily Collector Stuff It's Technically For Age Graded Stuff So With My Action Force Stuff Just To Give You Guys Some Quick Knowledge If You Want Your Toy To Be Graded Four Plus Which Is What All Hasbro Mattel Stuff Is You Have To Go Through Some Strict Testing That The Factory Does And Has To Pass Drop Test Sharp Point Test All These Kind Of Ridiculous Tests That Cost A Lot Of Money So Action Force To Go Through That It Would Have To Cost A Lot Of Money But This I Know My Consumer My Consumers And Kids Like Us So I Age Graded For 13 Plus And That Has Their Stuff Age Graded Higher So That Stuff Then Lives Over In That Section Because It It's Not Mixed In With To Toy Stuff For A Parent To Get Confused Right Right Arlen Goes Through The Testing To Even Do The Collector Stuff The DC Collector Stuff At Four Or Five Plus So He's In There That's Why His Stuff Is In With The General Toy Population Action Force Stuff Would End Up Being By The DVDs If I Didn't Want To Pay For The Testing Right So Yeah So Going Back To The Original Point Like Now It's Like Collector Stuff Is So Freaking Hot And It's Like You See Now It's Like There's Less Kid Focused Like Think About Just Action Figures Look At If You Can Go To A Target And See Actual Shelves With Product On It You'll See That Game Reverse They Did Some Game Reverse Figures Which Are Like Five POA Figures Which [00:25:21] Speaker 3: We [00:25:22] Speaker 2: Started Doing Kid Stuff That Was We Wanted To Be The Same Scale As Legends Because We Wanted If Kids Had Legends We Wanted That Scale To Live There Right And That Was A Trend That I Was Part Of When I Was Working On Spider-Man In 2015 We Started Doing These Five And Half Inch Figures And We Realized That The Five And Half Figures Five And Half Inch Figures You Get More Out Of It And It It's More In Scale And Kids Can Have These Two Different Scales Plus The Tooling For A Six Inch Figure As Opposed To A Four Inch Figure Isn't Incredibly Different Which Is Like You Get More Profitability For A Higher Scale Figure Just By Paying A Little More When The Four Inch Figures That Why The Four Marvel Universe Line Died Right Cost Just Wasn't There So You Know They Have The Game Reverse Figures And Now They Have These New Spider Man Figures That Just Came Out Other Than That It's Legends It's Yes There's Some Kid Role Play Stuff But It's Legends Legends Yes You Have The 12 Inch Titan Hero But Half If Not Three Quarters Is Collector Action Figures DC Stuff You Smaller Stuff But It's Like The McFarlane McFarlane Has Three Rows Of Figures Taking Up So Much More Jurassic Park Collector Stuff You Know Star Wars Is Collector Stuff Even Though They Have Four Inch Figures And Six Inch Figures But It's Like We All Know Who's Buying That Stuff It's Collectors It's Like Collectors Of Take It's The Market Now So If You See A Collector Running Through Target They're Not Going To Run To The DVD Section They're Going To The Toy Aisle First Because That's What The Important Stuff Is So Common [00:27:02] Speaker 1: Sense Will Tell You Bobby That Adult Collectors Have More Disposable Income Parents Buying Toys For Their Children That Has A Limited Time Span On It Adult Collectors Will Collect For Years And Years And Years So That's Just Common Sense You Don't No One Needs To Give Their Resume To Prove That They've Got Some Common Sense In Their Head [00:27:24] Speaker 2: Yeah Another Stupid Thing I Heard Recently Was That These Target Walmart Big Box Stores Are Made For Parents Trying To Buy A Present For Their Kids Friend That Couldn't Be Further From The Truth I Have Kids My Friends Have Kids I've Asked Them When You Need To Buy A Present For A Kid's Birthday Party Do You Go To The Store They're Like No I'm Not Going To Spend The Time Going To The Store For Another Kid's Kid I'm Going To Just Buy It Online It's One Click You Go To Target For Your Own Kids Or Yourself [00:28:01] Speaker 3: Common [00:28:02] Speaker 2: Sense Or Just Old Pre You Know 2015 Thinking So You Know Now It's Like Yeah Disposable Income Parents You Know Parents Are There But They're Also Taking Their Kids They're Buying For Their Own Kids They're Not Buying For Other People's Kids You Know We're Buying For Ourselves That Sort Of Thing So You Know Yeah To Your Point It's Like Yes We Have We're The Ones Buying This Stuff Legends Aren't Flying Off The Shells Because Of Kids They're Flying Off The Shells Because Of Collectors And I Can Tell You Right Now That When I Was Still At Hasbro In 2018 I Can't Speak For What They Are Now Because I Don't Know And I'm Not To Say What I Did In Like Ridiculous The Marvel Star Wars Huh Bigger Than Star Wars No I'm Just Saying For Like The Marvel Segment Legends Was The Highest Selling Segment Of All The [00:29:08] Speaker 1: Marvel Products Of All Marvel Yeah So [00:29:12] Speaker 2: You Know Could Have Fooled Me That Retailers Don't Care About Collectors [00:29:17] Speaker 3: Yeah That That Is Something That I Saw In The Chat Earlier And Speaking Of Chat I Got To Do Super Chats Here Real Quick But Right Before The Show Started Somebody Was Saying That Well Collectors Only Make Up 20% Of The Toy Market And I'm Like I Told The Guy I Was Like Well If They're Only 20% Then There Are A Lot Of Companies Both Big And Small Vying For The Attention Of That 20% Over The Other 80% The Alleged 80% Of Demand Like If Wouldn't You Rather Try And Jump Into The Space Where 80% Of The Buyers Are Than 20% And Yet Bondi Mafex You Know Hot Toys Super 7 NECA What Was A Big Boss Fight Hasbro Mattel Playmates Like The List Goes On And On And They're All Trying To Go After Just That 20% I Don't That To Me Says Common Sense Says It's Not 20% Now I Could Be Wrong And Those Little Tykes Pedal Cars Are The Other 80% Of Everything Sold I Just Don't Think So I Don't Know Law Of Averages Anyway We'll Get Back To The Super Chat He Says Loving The One Six Figure Display Behind You Vintage Collection Bespin Han Unfortunately The Only One That I Could Find Had A Weird Paint Error And It Looked Like He Had A Receding Hairline Yeah Okay I May Have Now Mess Myself Up Here So Let Me Go Over To My Channel Monetization Let's See What I Got Here Let's See See All And Of Course That Doesn't Work Because Why Would It Not Working For Me Great I'll [00:31:09] Speaker 1: See If I Can Help You [00:31:11] Speaker 3: No That's Okay It's It's Fine I'm I'm Just Trying To Make Sure I Grab Everybody But Jeff McElway Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Slightly Off Topic When Do We See Michael In Action Forces The Okay We Already Read That One Okay Hold On No It's Because It's Because This Window Is Not Showing Up It's Fine All Right So Right Here We Have Hayden TCM2 I'm Sorry I Can't Pull This Up Hayden Says The Mayor Near My House Only Has A Bunch Of Zori Blisses Yavin Lukes And Hydramans They Better Restock By November Or They're Going To Have A Problem Brian Dillingham Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Thanks For The Great Content You Are Welcome Sir Jeff Barker Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Talk Among Yourselves [00:32:02] Speaker 1: Thanks Jeff [00:32:05] Speaker 3: Let's See Salvador Thank You For The Super Chat He Says This Stream Should Come With A Warning Label Contents May Be Extremely Hot With These Three Handsome Men Okay Back To My YouTube Social Media Break Thanks For Popping In Let's See There Goes And Then Dark Joker Zinn Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Wanted To Show Support For You Dark Joker Zinn That Is A Man We All Know And Love Gundam Warrior Thank You For The Super Chat He Says I Can't Wait For Toy Guru Excuses In His Video Tomorrow Lio Convoy Reviews Thank You For The Super Chat He Says What Doesn't Make Sense To Me Is The Constant Blaming Of Toys R Us Closing It's Been Four Years They Had Time To Adjust Jim Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Dropping Love For The Mods George Thank You For The Super Chat He Says My 80s DC Super Powers Dr. Fate Played To Pieces Helmet Is Attached To My Woodworking Apron Anyone Else Make Custom Paraphernalia For Nostalgia Sake I Guess That's Something You'll Have To Find Out In The Chat Jim Largo Thank You For The Kind Super Chat He Says Thanks Gents For This Conversation Store Exclusive Has Become Synonymous With Unattainium How Does The Toy Industry Benefit And That Is Something We're About To Get Into Clock Man Oh 40 Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Hey Everyone Michael Read My At After This Please First Off Sorry For Such A Small Super Chat I Don't Want To Break That Rule Of How Little I Can Type But My Dad Has Me On A Budget Because I Bought Tools Also Getting Ready To Start Video Making To Help Build Funds To Buy My Injection Molder Good Clock Man Sounds Like You're On Your Way Man Good Luck With It Let's See Lyle Convoy Thank You For The Super Chats Boosting Clock Man Messages And Then Bjorn Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Just Cause Matt Movie 611 Is Here Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Always Great Fun Seeing You Three Together On Retro Blasting And Then Commandant VHS Thank You For The Super Chat He Says Half The Let's Get Back To The Discussion Oh Wait No Wait We Have One More World Meta Cardboard Says Thank You World Meta Cardboard He Says The Walgreens Near Me Had Five Dollar Marvel Five POA Figures In Poly Bags From Hasbro It Is Possible For Them To Make Real Toys At A Good Price Interesting Wow Five POA Figures In Poly Bags At Walgreens I Didn't Know That Was Even A Thing James Saltzberg Thank you For The Super Chat He Says For Action Force Series Three Any Chance For A Mother Of Pearl Cult Or Cult Peacemaker [00:35:07] Speaker 2: Not For Series Three But I Do Have A Character That Is Planned For Series Four That May Have Two Of Those [00:35:20] Speaker 3: All Right All Right I'm Gonna Let That I'm Gonna Let That Mystery Hang In The Air For A Moment So We Were Just Getting Into This Discussion And People In The Super Chat Have Been Talking About The Empty Toy Isles Things Like That And Where The Tipping Point Is There So I Want To Couch It Or Orient This Question This Way We've All Been Lifelong Toy Collectors We Probably All Of Us Depending On Barring Some Moments In Our Lives Where Another Country Where There Weren't Retail Stores And You Were Very Busy Or You Know I Was In School And Spent Several Weeks Just Going Back And Forth Between Classrooms And My Dormitory Or Whatever Barring Those Periods In Our Lives We've All Probably Every Time We Go Into A Retail Store We Go To The Toy Isle It's Just A Thing We Just Go Even If We Don't Buy Anything We Look And So We See You Know As We Live Our Lives We See This Diminishment Now The Inferences You Can Make As A Uneducated Person In This Space Like Myself Meaning As Far As Not Having Been In The Industry Even Though I Worked At Toys R Us I Worked Toys R Us In The Late 90 So I Got You Know It Was Horn A Plenty Back Then You Get Whatever You Wanted All The Time The Inferences I Can Make The Conjectures That I Can Make Deposits That I Can Bring Up Are One That The Retailer Isn't Ordering Enough Or The Distribution Is Wonky Because Of Stories I Of Say After I Did The Mando Retro Collection Video A Bunch Of British Collectors Told Me They're Piling Up Over There And Are On Clearance And Can't Get Sold Whereas Over Here They're In Very High Demand And They're Nowhere To Be Found They're On Clearance Here In Australia As Well Let Me Tell You Right So There's That Inference And Then There's Also The One Where You Could Say To Yourself Well As As Wonky Or The Manufacturer Is Not Making Enough One Of The Three Right So All Of Those Things Without Without Any Extra All You've Got Is Your Observational Data At That Point As A Buyer All You've Got Is I Go To Stores Every Week And There's Never Anything Here And It's Been Going On Like This For Over Six Years That's All The Data I've Got I Got Nothing Else Beyond That So Everything I'm About To Say After This Is You Know Potential It's Opinion With What's The Potential For This To Be The Actual Fact So If Enough Buyers Have The Opinion That Retailers Aren't Ordering Enough Or The Manufacturer Isn't Making Enough Or The Distribution Is A Real Problem And It Becomes Very Frustrating To Try And Buy Said Companies Products At What Point Do Those Opinions From The Bulk Of Your Customers Start To Supersede The Triviality Of The Facts At That Point Because If The Facts Are Behind The Curtain And The Products Aren't Getting Into The Buyers Hands In A Consistent And You Know Satisfying Way Isn't That The Point In A Business Where Things Start To Need To Change Am I Wrong Here Like Correct If I'm Wrong Like [00:38:53] Speaker 2: No [00:38:54] Speaker 3: Okay Okay So Bobby What Do You Think Is The Tipping Point Like Anecdotally Say Where It Starts To It Starts To Not Matter What The Structural Facts Are Of Minimum Order Quantities And Things Like That And Plano Grams And When When Does The Customer's Opinion Waive All Of That All Of That Minutia When Does That When Does That Supersede That [00:39:24] Speaker 2: Uh Never Okay Never Um Yeah I mean Listen It's I Would Like To Say That You Know It Won't It Won't Affect Things Immediately Uh It Takes It Takes Time Built For Instance Like Why Collecting Got Really Hot With Legends You Had Legends Like Why Why All of A sudden Did It Take You Know Halfway Through Marvel's Cinematic Universe For It To Like Really Catch On And I Don't Know The Answer To That I Wish I Did But You Know What They Saw It With The Guardian's Wave With The Cap Winter Soldier Wave And They Like Oh Okay Well The Next One Let's Order Some More And They Ordered Some More And It's Like Okay Well All right Those Those Did Really Well Let's Let's Up Next Time It's Not Like They Could Say Oh Shoot We Sold Out Of That I Need More You're Not You're Not Going To Get More You Just Have To Wait Till The Next Game Starts So You Know It's It's Not It's Not The Manufacturers Not Manufacturing Enough Because What What I My Theory Is And I've Never Gotten Confirmation That This Is Actually You Know A Fact Right By There's A Hundred Thousand Of A Captain America Figure But There's 1600 Stores Target Is Thinking Okay Well We Know We've Sold You Know A Thousand Of Iron Man The Year Before So Let's Order You Know You Know Let's Order Or Sorry Let's Say They Or They Sold 100,000 Iron Man They're Like Alright Let's Order 150,000 Cap Let's Spread Over Our 1600 Stores Throughout the It's Not Not Every Store Orders The Same Amount Right Some Stores Are In Bigger Are And That Sort Of Thing So If That Those That 100,000 Starts Here And Then With Each Store It Goes To It's Getting Less And Less And Less And Less And Less And You Get A Bunch Of Stores Out West That Have High Quantities That They Order Midwest Not So Much Then By The Time It Gets To The East Coast And They Have Big Orders There Might Not Be Enough For Them To Fill Because With That Store I'm Store Over Here In Rhode Island I'm Putting In An Order For Seven Cases Of That Cap But By The Time It Gets Through Distribution My Target You Know Hub Might Say To Me All Right We Know You Ordered Seven We Don't Have Seven Available We Have Three So You're Going To Get Three It's Like Okay Well That's That's That's How That [00:42:07] Speaker ?: That [00:42:07] Speaker 2: That Works Just Because You Order Seven Does Not Mean You're Going To Get Seven So That Seems Like A Big Miss Considering [00:42:13] Speaker 3: That The East Coast Has A Lot Of A Lot Of Areas And Big Cities Where [00:42:17] Speaker 2: People Would Want That Like I Said You Know The Wave Of Distribution Over The Country It's Like It's Like It's Like Putting Enough Peanut Butter On Knife And Then Saying Am I Going To Get Across The Whole Piece Of Bread Right To The Other Side [00:42:30] Speaker 3: So There Might Not Be As Many There Might Not Be As Many Actual Let's Let's I'll Put This Out There And You Guys Throw It Back In My Face If I'm Wrong There Might Not Be As Many Actual Cap Buyers Like Captain America Fans In Some Of Those Mid Markets But There's One Or Two Really Savvy Scalpers In One Market There And They're Getting More Than Anybody Seen On The East Coast Yep And So They're Able To Throw Those Up On eBay Because They Got More Cases At The North Dakota Target Than You Know In The Middle Of Nowhere Than The New York City Suburb Target Did And So They're Able To Throw Those Up There So Why Is That Distribution Model From West To East Not Being Augmented So That They They're Getting More The Product Where The Eat Yeah [00:43:29] Speaker 2: I Listen I wish I knew Yeah You know Eventually It's like When the movie Comes out You know The first Action Force Stuff That's Going to Hit Target Walmart Is Probably Going to Be The Movie Wave Stuff But You know Then I'll Get My First Kind Of Glimpse At That Like First Hand You know And See How That Is Done It's Like I'm Going to Do Everything Possible To Make Sure You Know Because The Way It Works Is Like Like At Hasbro We Had You Know Our Team Designers Brand Managers That Sort Of Thing But Then We Would Kind Of Pitch To The Sales Team And Then Hasbro Sales Team Would Then Have To Take All Of Our Hard Work And Pitch To The Buyers And That Always Bothered Me Because I Would Sit In These Sales Meetings Where I'm Watching Someone Pitch My Product And I'm Like You Dumb A Like Not Describe That Product In An Exciting Way At All And Every Now And Then They Would Like When I Was On Spider-Man They Would Let Me Come In And Do The Presentation Because I Was A Really Good Presenter Right And I Got To The Point Where I Was Always Presenting My Product No One Ever Presented My Product For Me [00:44:39] Speaker 1: I [00:44:41] Speaker 2: Was Good At Doing What I Did And Selling It And Making It Look As Awesome As I Planned It Right And Then When You See Some Dummy Just Up There Just Saying Oh And This Is Our This And It's Like Okay No You Gotta Sell Them And Hasbro Never Held The Buyers Accountable So For Ever Legends Item I Worked On Was A Five Pack For Toys R Us That Was The All New X-Men Box Set Right Back In 2012 Or 2013 And It Was Originally An Amazon Exclusive Now We Had Tooled Up New Parts For It You Know Granted It Wasn't A Lot Of Tooling It Was You Know But Money Was Spent Yeah And Then At The Last Minute Like We Were You Know We Went To Production Like They Went To Production I Got I Had Samples At The Last Minute Amazon Was Like Nah I Changed My Mind We're Not Going To Take That Now You Would Think That They Should Be On The Hook Right No You Told Us You Were Going To Order It You Agree To X Amount Of Pieces We Produced X Amount Of Pieces We Paid For Tooling We Gave You This Item You Can't Say That Hasbro Was Always So Scared Of Flexing Their Muscles And Pissing Off The Retailer Oh Okay You Don't Have To Take It Thanks But You're Going To Take This Other Stuff Right And Was Like I'm Sitting There Like What Do You Mean They Just Dropped It So I Was Saying To My Grand Manager At The Time Like You Have A New Home For It And He's Like No No One's Going No One's Going Take You Mine The Brand Manager Is Marketing He's A Different Team I Went To My Boss I Said Hey Listen Man I'm Not Trying To Throw Anyone On The Bus But Listen I Fight For The Items I Work On Especially We Put Money Into I Said We Tooled This Item Amazon Didn't Take It And No One's Fighting To Get The Item Somewhere Else He Kind Of My Brand Manager Got Mad At Me Like Hey Why Just Throw Me In Their Bus I Like Listen I'm Fighting For This Product If You're Not Going To Fight For The Product Let Me Fight For The Product And It Turned Out I Did What I Need To [00:47:20] Speaker ?: To [00:47:20] Speaker 2: Get The Product Made And We Got Toys Toys Toys Toys Toys No One Knows That Was An Amazon Exclusive We Would Do When I First Got Hired At Hasbro I Was On The Exclusives Team Where It Was Just A Team Of Two Designers And We Would Handle All Of The Exclusive Product So I Did Transformers I Did Nerf I Did Star Wars I Did Marvel But It Wasn't Until They Broke Up That Team And Each Brand Absorbed Their Own Exclusives Like It Items We Want One This Item One That Item And I Would Put My Decks Together And I Would Design All These Things And Figure Out What We Can Do And It Was Like All Right We'll Hear Your You Know Your Ten Items That We Pitched To You And Like Okay Well We Want These Seven How Many Of Those You Think We're Actually Going To Do And We End Up Doing Like Two Or Three You Know It Was Like That Happened So Often So Often Like You Guys Don't Realize Behind The Scenes Is Just Because Something Ends Up A Target Exclusive Or A Walmart Exclusive Doesn't Mean It Started Out That Way You Know Or Or Something Became A Target Exclusive That Maybe Was Meant To Be Main Line But You Know What They Didn't Get Enough Orders For It You Know And They Were Like Oh Crap You Know We We Expected This To Be A Hundred Thousand But You Know Retail Is Only Taking Forty Thousand Well Okay Well Now We're Gonna Have To Make An Exclusive That Kind Of Thing A Lot Of Exclusives Kind Of Thing And It Also Like When You See Segments Like I Bet You The G.I. Joe Retro Line Now I'm Saying This Is Opinion I'm Just Guessing This Is A Fact Because I've Worked On G.I. Joe Before Just Because I Worked On G.I. Joe Means That Everything That G.I. Joe Does Now I Know The Facts For What I'm Saying Is That If I To Guess The G.I. Joe Retro Line That Is Now A Walmart Exclusive I Bet You Did Not Start Out As A Walmart Exclusive I Bet You That It Started Out As The Hasbro Sales Team Pitching To Retail And Saying We Have Classified And We Have This Retro Line And You Know The Retailers They Go Through Their Decks And After The Presentation They Take A Week Give Their Prelim Numbers Probably Turned Out That No One Really Took That And Walmart Probably Had A Little Interest And Then What Hasbro Probably Does Is They're Like Okay Well Target Really Didn't Take It Maybe Target Took A Little Bit But Then Walmart Took More But Say We Allocated For 50,000 Of That Line Target Say They'll Take 10,000 And Walmart Said They'll Take 30 Well We Still Need 50 So What We'll Say Is All Right Target We're Actually Not Going To Sell To You We're Going To Make An Exclusive They Go To Walmart And Like Listen We Know You Wanted 30 But Say You Take All 50 Probably Give You Better Margins Of That Sort Of Thing I'm Not Saying That Is A Fact Of How It Works If I Had To Guess On How The Business Right Just By My Experiences And Talking With The People And Being At Hasbro For Almost Seven Years And Doing My Thing Now Still Industry Like That's That's How That Would Probably Work At Least That's Probably How I Like Listen If I Was Going To Retail I Couldn't Find Homes For Stuff I Would Probably Go And I Would Do Something Like That To Go And Find A Home For An Item It's Just Business It's Just Well Speaking Of Business [00:51:17] Speaker 3: Sorry Tony Go Ahead [00:51:18] Speaker 1: It Makes Total Sense But What You're Explaining There Makes Total Sense To Me You Haven't Talked Around In Circles And Just Blamed Everything On Plano Gramps And COVID So I [00:51:32] Speaker 3: Was Actually Going To Regress That That Whole I Was Going To Direct That To You Tony Because The Exclusives Thing Has Been A Constant Headache For US Collectors For A While But I Also Heard It's Even Worse For People Outside The US Who Are Toy Collectors Can You Relate Some Of Those Experiences And What You Deal With When You Hear That Something Isn't Exclusive How Often Is [00:52:02] Speaker 1: This As An Example With Cobra Island Stuff Simply Because We Have Target Here In Australia And You Have Target US But We Don't Get The Target Exclusives Here So That's So They Must You Know Just Because They're Both Called Target Target Australia If It Is The Same Company It's A Completely Different It's The Australian Department Or Branch Whatever You Call It So In My Experience Certainly Over The Last Four To Five Years Any Kind Of Store American Store Exclusive Is Not Available Here Whatsoever At Any Store You Have To Resort To Online Get It Shipped From Oversee All We Get Is Mainline Stuff I Think There Are The Odd Occasion Where Very Odd Occasion Where We May Get Something Exclusive To An Australian Store I Can't Be But It's Always Something Ridiculous Like A Black Series Star Wars Snow Trooper In Christmas Colors Right And That Might Be Exclusive To EB Games Or Something Like That But Yeah Primarily We Just Get The Mainline Stuff Here In Australia And We Don't If You Want The Exclusives You Got To Resort To Some Online Boutique Store That May Change Like I I Heard A Really Interesting Bit Of Information Very Recently When I Was In Perth A Couple Of Days Ago I Got A Good Friend Of Mine who owns a collectible toy store um haven't seen him for a while popped into to see him picked up some mcfarlane batman 66 stuff uh but i was having a chat with him and you know asking how he's been going through covid and all this kind of thing and uh he was telling me that you know he's had this store for i want to say about seven or eight years now he's had this shop he's doing quite well um he's been struggling from the start to get an account with hasbro but he's way too small fry for hasbro they're like no no you you've got to place an 80 000 you know 50 000 us dollar order to even open an account with us so he has to go through other um other sort of avenues to get the product that he wants for his store but he he was telling me that he's concerned about the future of his business because here in australia we have a massive chain of stores called jb hi-fi jb hi-fi sell physical media cds dvds blu-rays computers tvs stereos keypads cameras all of that i don't know what the american equivalent is but it's probably the biggest chain in australia for that type of product you know that's where i go to to get you know my video cameras and all that kind [00:54:56] Speaker 3: of stuff it was a gorgeous store it it rivals and beats best buy in every category here i was there at the one right outside melbourne because they had kylie minogue's 1994 reissue album that's where i got it was a jb hi-fi they held it for me i drove out there i have a picture of myself with it right outside the jb hi-fi everything you're saying about that store is right on the money tony so please [00:55:19] Speaker 1: continue it's it's it's a fantastic store that huge an electronic department store uh i don't know how he how he knows this information he said he said i'm quite concerned because um jb hi-fi have now decided that their store is the ideal place to start selling adult collectible figures and they're going to start buying in legends black series because you're seeing gaming stores start to do this because gaming stores can see the writing on the wall you know my son's been a gamer most of his life he stopped going in and buying physical discs some time ago and everything now is downloaded well the thing with jb hi-fi maybe they'll stop selling physical discs of games but they're still selling the consoles the screens the controllers the cameras the keyboards the computers so they're not going away and they're going to start buying in adult collectible product because there's a huge they know there's a huge market for it um and certainly for someone like myself you know i earn a decent salary i earn a decent income you know i like to spend money on toys and even though i'm mainly a vintage collector if i'm in target or kmart i will walk down the toy aisle and if i see a cool toy i will buy it but i go when i'm down in perth when i'm in the in the city i go into a lot more jb hi-fis than i do into a target because i'm also on the lookout for blu-rays and i'm i'm i'm a gadget guy i want you know a new keyboard for my for my computer and that kind of thing so i'm really interested to see how that's going to go in australia and jb hi-fi is such a massive chain across australia they could easily get that hasbro account will in the future will we start getting jb hi-fi exclusives that you guys can't get in the states right well you two will get them because i'll help arm and send them to you i mean sorry go i just wanted there i am jb hi-fi look at that [00:57:38] Speaker 2: uh sorry bobby you were saying oh yeah i mean it's go ahead go ahead sorry that's a very viable option because hasbro is already doing uk exclusives very rarely it happens but for those of you that remember legends i'm trying to remember what year we were doing it maybe 2017 2018 we started doing it maybe 2017 we were doing like these best of waves where i think we did a best of wave that was the hulk buster where we took a wave of say five great figures not any particular figures i think they were all movie figures we took like the best five figures and then we put them in a wave with the hulk buster and then we made the hulk buster a slightly different color red or added some slightly different deco and then that was a uk exclusive wave i remember that like pissed people off because they were like wait a second we get oh if i want to get this variant which was a better looking hulk buster like i remember the thing like i had one in my office i'm like this is such a better looking hulk buster but people are like how am i going to get this whole wave and also it's like it's a heavy wave because it's hulk buster so it's like spending that shipping to get to the united states so it's like i get it man like that kind of stuff like it's it's hard because yes do i have exclusives for people yes um but it's it's the nature of it all like big bad toys is a great partner and if they come to me like hey we want an exclusive what am i going to do i'm going to tell this great partner no i'm not going to make an exclusive for you that's not going to build on a relationship right so it's like you have to but i don't think it's like that so much for hasbro it's like yes target wants their own exclusives but it's not building relationships like i'm trying to build a relationship but also there's things that i'm taking into consideration for instance like there's an exclusive for series two that hasn't been revealed yet that's for big bad and i think it's probably going to be the highest selling figure the whole line like ever because it's such an awesome figure right and i want to you know i haven't had the conversation with them yet but i want to have the conversation with them like listen you know i want this to be an exclusive for you but if they say they're only willing to take a certain amount of pieces because you know no no retailer wants to be left with product let's say they they only want to take x amount if i want to gamble i want to say well i think that's going to sell double that i might talk to them and say listen you get the exclusive for six months and you have six months to sell through but then i will order my own quantity that i'll sell it'll still be a big bad exclusive but i'll have it available on my site to sell as well like i want to do that because i want to give people the opportunity to to get that you know um because it's like i i don't like the scalping nature i do i really don't like that you know it's like i was talking with one of my vendors and they wanted an item to be a lot lower and i want i want it to be more because i don't like that i don't like you know and they're like well you know it's if if if something is is coveted then it it makes collecting your line like more collectible and i'm like yes but i want that like right i think you can collect the line that's readily available and you know yes there can be a few rare items but having something so rare doesn't make your your your line any more or less collectible you know it's like if you're going to do something super rare like that like i'm doing with the slammer figure slammer figures the same exact sarge figure as the mainline version he's just in different packaging right yes it's limited to 500 but it's one of those things where if you okay you're a completist all right you got to have it all right well listen that then you get into that collector pond you know the the hunt the hunt collector pond but for everyone else it's like it's not like you're you're an out of the box collector saying like oh i gotta have that because it's a different version it's not a different version it's just here's something that's a little a little cooler a little more exclusive it's like i'm only doing 500 because it's like because it also is just the same figure in mainline um you know you have to be very very particular in what what you give because keeping your fan base happy that sort of thing it's it's it's really important and yeah you know yes like hasbro just yes they care about their bottom line it's like yeah they're making money so are they really going to listen to you know collectors probably not and that has nothing to do with collectors being important or not right their their perceptions like you know listen when i was on the brand the guy running the brand literally said to me one day i don't care who's buying this product as long as people are buying the product so it's like they don't they didn't care who who whose money it was whether it was a 90 year old grandmother 20 year old collector six-year-old kid they just do not care it doesn't matter whose hand is holding that 20 bill as long as a hand is [01:02:29] Speaker 3: holding that 20 bill right that's the unfortunate part about it so that means so that means that they're not really doing like a demographic breakdown of who their buyers really are in these product lines at this point like they're just kind of just hoping they fly off the shelves i'm sure they're doing [01:02:46] Speaker 2: uh something sorry someone in the chat just asked no this is a mega man i designed uh when i was at hasbro sorry off topic um i don't i don't i i think they're definitely doing that that research but i don't think it really weighs like you know like yeah we did you know all sorts of kind of testing and that sort of thing but my opinion is if you're not getting the whole sample it's hard to really you know you know make a make a claim it's like if you're taking a hundred legends fans you know i don't think that's enough to judge what a legends fan would want right like we did uh you know the we did the the figure the vote on a figure uh at comic-con we did it one time i believe in 2015 for a four inch figure on the line i was working on and it ended up being gamora and um but we kind of designed that knowing knowing what people like we it's almost like they rig the system it's almost like when i was at hasbro you're the casino yes you're getting the play at the table and you may think you might have a chance to win at the end of the day we're the only ones winning we're rigging the game you know they do these waves it's like okay well even when they're doing legend the six-inch figure it's like okay well we probably think one of these two is going to win all right but we'll bet we're definitely going to do one of them in a way how many times have you guys seen it a fan voted figure then one of the other figures that was offered ends up in the way you know so it's like yeah you're voting but it's also a small sample you know how many people are at comic-con you know i think they said like a million people go to comic-con but not all of them are legends fans so right how many legends fans were voting on that day i don't remember but you know that's that's the kind of thing all i'm saying is like their sample sizes are never big enough with the research they're doing they're just not like to me it's like if i want to know the answer i need the whole entire sample i don't have to just have 10 of it or a third of it i need all of it [01:04:49] Speaker 1: so would it be fair to say bobby when you're talking about hasbro caring about collectors that they want to make product that they know the collectors want to buy but they don't really care if all the collectors get that product sorry what was that so hasbro wants to make product that they know the collectors want to buy but they don't really care if all the collectors get that product [01:05:19] Speaker 2: yeah i don't i don't know if it's it's a i don't think they think like the so like i would care about it on the design level and even like someone like ryan ting who's a a friend of mine he's the brand manager on on marvel big time collector huge marvel fan he cares about the brand like a designer cares about the brand but we've always said as designers like the designers care more about the brand than anybody or the product they're working on once it kind of gets to the next levels the care goes down so when it gets to the the like i said those read the the sales team that's pitching this stuff to the retailer they don't really care they don't care they're just like hey i gotta pitch this line they don't care if there's one hot figure it's a hotway ball ball like that's just not on their radar because they're just not fans they just don't understand like all all they care about is we need to move this product so i i just don't think it's on their radar to think everyone should get this that wants it they're just like to them do you know who they care about they care about the target buyer they don't care about who they they care about who buys the product after it gets to target but their main concern is the target buyer because then it's the target buyers uh responsibility to get it on shelf put it on end cap or whatever blah blah that's the easy part getting the customer to buy the product is easy you know if you make a good product we like it's easy for us to go in there and buy it you say you go into a store you see a cool time to buy it i'm the same way but the hard part is getting the like that that whole sales team bar buying team that that's the that's the hard part you know and it's like look at walgreens you notice how walgreens started taking an absurd amount of legends and they got a bunch of exclusives like around 2016 why that was walgreens got a new buyer that buyer is a toy fan he's a collector he loves legends why do you think that happened like perfect example you think the buyer for target is a toy collector you know and that's the thing you should know a thing or two about what you are buying and selling in order to buy and sell stuff something you know if i if i want to change professions now i want to go into like i want to become a car salesman and i know for a fact i hate fords which i do but say i were to you know say no one hired me but a ford dealership was like hey we'll hire a salesman i think i'm really gonna like you think i'm really gonna like love selling a ford yeah yeah right you won't you won't yeah you know or it's like if i just decided to change professionally like say hey tomorrow i want to go you know sell cars but it's like i know nothing about selling cars well do you think i'm going to be any good at selling cars if i don't if i'm not a fan of cars or a fan of what i'm doing it just you have to you have to be part of it and that's why like you know hasbro had this trend when they started getting rid of people you know they they called too too passionate about about the brand or about the product they were like the collectors me daryl the priest like you know dave honor was a guy like we were like labeled people that were like oh the collectors the fanboys that that that sort of thing and i'm like why is that a problem right we know the brand we know the consumer like what like yeah they think oh you're too close to the bramble while you get them i'm the guy you're selling to like why would you not listen [01:08:56] Speaker 3: to me like like you know i think i think i told you that story it happened to me at toys r us when i worked there they they they they wanted me working as far away from the star wars figures and the action figures in general as possible even though i knew all about them and could sell them and answer anybody's questions about them they had me like in like rollerblades because and they told me you're too interested in this they the guy the manager literally said you're too interested in this we don't want you what kind of shop are we running here like you know i i can't even balance on rollerblades what do you want me to do just stand there and reach up and hand people stuff like they have questions you know customers have questions i know you don't know this because you wear your tie and your cheap button down shirt and you sit in that little you know guard house over there you know your office um it's ridiculous and it's that's a corporate mentality that i've never been able to get around [01:09:54] Speaker 2: uh i'm gonna go through sorry bobby go ahead no my wife and i we went to we were looking for a new washer the other day so we went to home depot and we're just looking at washers and you know the the guy running the the washer department or the appliance department you would think like oh that guy who's over there who was put in that role probably knows about refrigerators and washing machines and dryers and dishwasher because he's in this section i asked him like softball basic questions about right this this one washer and he was like um i'm not really sure and that was like his answer from like the three questions i asked him i i'm not really sure and i'm just like why are you here why are you here who are you helping go back to your little computer and act like you're you're important because you obviously have no idea what you're doing so i don't i don't get where that that breakdown has started i've noticed that about around all of corporate america where they do not have the right jobs no either that's not enough jobs to go around not enough people or not enough of the right people because it's like i'm just like listen man i know everyone should have the opportunity to work and get a job but you've got to hire the right people for the right job i don't know i don't know crap about it i can't get an it job and i'm not going to sit there and argue and be like you should hire me because i'm willing to work but i i don't know anything about it but you should just hire me [01:11:17] Speaker 3: it's okay don't worry about it i'll figure it out i've uh i had that problem on every every company i worked for they would hire me for a specific set of skills on my resume and then immediately the day i got hired after an arduous process of getting into these corporate jobs they would then immediately put me like within a month into a cross training program out of where they actually hired me for and it was just constant it was just constant cross training that i never actually got used for any of the skills that i had and that wasn't my fault that was that was their plan it was this master it was this master plan and the the joke that i finally made in a presentation um at my last job which was uh the cable company um i said i did a presentation where i just showed a screenshot of the character select screen for super mario 2 and i said all right everybody i said here's the deal i said i know everybody's obsessed with corporate cross training and all this kind of stuff i said but everybody who knows this game super mario 2 and you know it's a bunch of gen xers in the room they're like oh yeah yeah and i said which character once you understood this game did you never play and they were like mario and i said why because because he's just kind of okay at everything i'm like right you memorize which levels need luigi's high jump you memorize which levels need princess toadstool's long jump and you memorize which levels need speed which is toad yeah strong and fast i said the only person the only gamer that ever chooses mario is the guy that's beaten the game so many times he just needs a challenge and he's like hey i wonder if i can do the whole game with mario and i said that is what corporate people in charge do when everything's running well and all they're doing is sitting in their office needing to justify their existence they need something to do and so what do they do they start shell gaming their own department even though the department is now working just fine because the people with the right skills are in the right places but uh-uh that doesn't supersede the decision makers boredom they're bored so they want to they want to see if they can play mario on this one and it always screws everything up i was not popular after that presentation with certain people [01:13:42] Speaker 2: um real quick analogy though what's that bobby what a great analogy like feel free to use it um i was thinking of like like street fighter the same thing happened it's like well you're obviously going to beat the game with the strongest guy and then it's like all right well i'm going to try to play like dalsam who's kind of slow you know he was like the weaker guy so it's like but i want that challenge i want to beat it with every guy but it's like i think the mario 2 is a way better example [01:14:09] Speaker 3: um scott hughes thank you for the super chat he says just wanted to say thank you gentlemen you are welcome sir world made of cardboard thank you for the super chat he says is f bomb joining action [01:14:18] Speaker 1: force sorry had to ask f bomb uh someone made a custom action figure of grace and code named it f bomb yes but it'll be an australian exclusive [01:14:36] Speaker 3: nick cage thank you for the super chat he says hey y'all here's a super chat for you cool cats [01:14:40] Speaker 2: appreciate that nick nick cage i wish you got to do the superman movie all right man it's all right i just watched the documentary the other day so it was like fresh in [01:14:50] Speaker 3: my head uh let's see what else i have here i hope i didn't permanently lose some i may have permanently lost some of these super chats hold on bear with me here uh all right if i've if i've lost any super chats just let me know because the system in the background the dashboard is broken and when i hit see all it just shows me a blank screen so thanks youtube i'm gonna do the best i can here um kdx07 thank you for the super chat he says good day from brisbane oz wondering how you see the current and evolving supply chain issue around the world hindering toy production and distribution um i guess that's for you bobby do you see that as i mean obviously you're living it a little bit right now um do you see that as a as a relevant factor right now for companies that are a lot bigger than say valiverse um let me let me just [01:15:45] Speaker 2: read it again just so i understand what he's getting at um um yeah listen it's it's gonna affect everything um you know it's it when i okay a perfect example how it'll affect you know smaller companies versus you know what bigger company is is definitely the cost of shipping like i'm not gonna tell you guys what i'm paying for shipping or what what it's gonna cost um you know but it's put it this way it was a single digit number in the in the thousands you know a single thousands number before covid it is now a double digit number very high in the thousands so for a container that's up like i don't know 200 300 like it's disgusting so that's not okay and it's like if you're if you're a company and say like i feel for some of these guys like doing kickstarters and starting the toy companies like say you're i'm just gonna make up numbers these are not real numbers i'm just making up numbers people say you make a hundred thousand dollars on a kickstarter say your operating costs are fifty thousand okay so you're left with fifty thousand profit well if pre-covid shipping was a thousand dollars you're still making forty nine thousand dollars in profit but say during covid now and even today shipping is forty eight thousand dollars you're now making a thousand dollar profit right do you think that small company is going to be able to roll that money into doing the next wave no they're gonna have to then keep doing the kickstarter model luckily thankfully like i'm so thankful that action force got as big as it did because like i still the the i had the profit to be able to start series two and now i still have the profit to be able to start series three right because i don't ever want to do the crowdfunding model again like yes right pre-orders you know uh four horsemen they do pre-orders like that's just the way you do it when you're not a company like hasbro like you just have new pre-orders but you're not doing crowdfunding sure it's kind of funny i'm already planning to pay for all this but it's like if if you have to eat that huge cost like how are you going to survive like that's like i'm thinking that i'm like holy crap like i'm thinking like if actuals didn't get big it'd be a one and done and it's like that's you know these i think you're going to see these new kickstarters with a much higher fun goal because of that because they have to take that into consideration because it's not like it's not where it's just a few thousand dollars anymore it's tens of thousands of dollars that you [01:18:52] Speaker 3: have to allocate for and that sucks why do pre-orders have to have a sellout rate in other words it's not like a limited edition but yet it kind of is because a lot of us who have to race off to you know big bad toy store because they're getting inventory from somewhere you're trying to get it right from mattel creations or hasbro pulse they're pre-ordering so you think well why isn't there just a window and people just order and then that determines what their their manufacturing uh volume is going to be for that product give or take you know whatever yeah um i will give you an example and [01:19:30] Speaker 2: this is an example that i could say is fact because it's my line i'm working on it but this is just an example i'm not saying that this is how other companies do it this is how my company does it and this is this is something i've not announced yet so this is new news okay releasing new news here series two for action force is going it's there's going to be one pre-order window yeah write that down write this down to me there's going to be one pre-order window however we were able to put series two into production but not all of series two so i i want the product i wanted series two to be done by chinese new year like i want it to ship from the factory by chinese new year one because i want you guys to get series two quick like you waited so long for series one you have to get series two quick like right there's no question about it now if you don't know chinese new year chinese new year lasts like three weeks so basically the whole month of february is useless factories are open no shipping no nothing so everything shuts down so you can't do anything for the month of february so you need to get your product out so that it's on the boat crossing the water during that month that things are shut down oh well half of the wave you know there's there's eight core figures one is a valiverse exclusive one's a big bad exclusive so you know those those eight figures exclusives then there's you know a basic trooper there's a gear pack and there's a weapons pack of all those items half of them will ship before chinese new year so series two the pre-order window will be open for the whole series two right but the four the four figures that are going to ship before chinese new year i have to gamble on i have to gamble on what quantity i am going to give to the factory because i have to guess like this is what i think they're going to sell so i have to give those numbers i have to give i had to give them to the factory already so those are already set in stone because i don't want to delay series two any anymore it's like yes we went into production with series two but i also don't know what it's going to sell for it's like i would love to have the window to be able to put the pre-order up and wait but if i were to wait the product wouldn't ship out because i would have to wait and then the factory would have to go back and make more of the figure that they already made to accommodate for those additional pre-orders that came in so those four figures i have to guess on i have to talk to my my wholesalers and say look you have to lock in numbers but just for these four because the other items will have a bigger window and we have a longer time to do them so they'll they'll ship after chinese new year but we have the window to do them so when i put those pre-orders up it's quite possible that those four figures can sell out not the other items right because those four have already been allocated for numbers that's why pre-orders sell out because if you're if you open up a pre-order and you say you're going to deliver in a year yes pre-orders should never sell out because you're basically crowdfunding yourself you're saying right all right pre-order windows are open two months later i'll get final quantity to the factory finish the product you know we could have already been in production like tooling and that sort of thing during the two month window of pre-orders then when i give them the final quantity then they know how many figures to actually like run off the assembly line and then it's then it's easy but yeah that's a yearly time right if you want to deliver something quicker you have to guess at the numbers early you have to so that's that was the dilemma i was uh unfortunately put in but it's like all this all of this had had pushed things and pushed things and you have to rejigger stuff you have to constantly be you know figuring out what to do and i like i spent like two weeks like ripping my hair like what am i going to do how am i going to do it and you know making sure that the you know the four figures would be done for chinese new year which they are you know and and they'll ship out for chinese new year and you'll be able to get your series two a couple months after your series one stuff so it's like that was so important for that to happen and then it's also great that it we split it up because now you're getting the next half of series two a few months after that and then series three is right at the beginning of the fall i didn't want that big gap between series two and three now it's like it was kind of a a blessing in disguise that we split up series two it sucks it's like i would rather deliver the whole series all at once but it's it's better off that this is happening it's making easier and then you feel like you're getting more you know right um so that's that's kind of an idea on on how pre-orders worked i'm glad we got this because someone asked in the chat about pre-orders and why [01:24:39] Speaker 3: why they sell out and this yeah that's that's why i was following up on it yeah yeah this is why [01:24:43] Speaker 2: pre-orders sell out because if you're pre-ordering and you're delivering in less than six months the quant the final quantity had to have been given to the factory way before the pre-orders opened up so i know like i think four horsemen i think they're i'm not i'm not 100 on this i don't i don't know for sure but i i if if i i'm i may be wrong i'm not sure but i think they they pre-order and then make to order from those pre-order numbers so that they deliver their pre-orders you know a year from when the pre-order opens it's like i want to be able to you know and you should be able to guess like i should be able to look at what series one sold in quantities and look at the figures and say all right well because to me series two has just as good if not better figures than series one so i could say okay well i could figure out what these sold for but also i think a lot more people now have eyes on the brand and are waiting for it and it's like my extra quantities of series one i hope i sell through so all then i have to take that into consideration and that's how i was able to figure out my numbers for series for series two for those four figures that i had to to guess on um now yes it it's a gamble if it sells out that sucks man because i was thinking about i'm like you know i don't want to i don't want to sell out because then people people hate sellouts you know like right not being able to get something um also as a as a person doing business you also don't want to be left with a ton of product so i hope that i plan my numbers correctly that i don't sell out of the pre-orders and then i have a little bit extra in reserve that's what i'm looking for what you don't want is like 10 12 000 in reserve right a thousand two thousand in reserve for the people that missed out or just want more of something want to true build this and that um so you have to just it's it's a gamble man it's and it's it's hard it's hard to to think about that and like you know for someone who's running a company and still currently in the toy industry not you know just making youtube videos about not being in the toy industry i can say like it's it's there's a lot to juggle with you know it's i'm designing the the figures i'm you know dealing with all this production stuff i'm trying to plan out for series two and three i'm trying to explain expand the company in a direction to bring in another license to get this this movie stuff happening to get animation to get into video games to get more people involved in in the line like you know celebrities and this and that you know so it's like that's like all all on me and it's like i guess you could probably say i'm like a toy guru but i'm not that pretentious to actually call myself that but you know there's a lot that goes into you know this this business and making this stuff um just you know saying well i have some experience from you know almost 10 years ago but you know it's it's it but it's also different for for every company and you know the way i i'm doing pre-orders is way different than someone else will do pre-orders it's just because it's not like apples to apples it's like apples to oranges yes we're all fruit like yes dc and marvel are both superhero lines but they're nowhere near the same and you can't speak on experiences of one or the other because one's a dominant champion in the actual world and in entertainment and movies and stuff and the other is just a small collector line so it's not apples to apples um you know so just because i could say well this is how a pre you know i do my prayers doesn't mean that's how pre-orders are going to be done so when i tell you guys this is what i'm what i'm saying listen that's not the way other other people are doing it they could have another pre-order formula that i don't know about that's pretty awesome and i you know just over time maybe i'll learn that kind of stuff and talking with other companies and seeing how other people handle it and that's kind of how you grow and you got to see what works and listen it's been going well uh for action force so far and you know we've you know besides the the distribution and then the getting stuff here which you know we're limiting now it's all been going incredibly well will there be a miss every now and then yes yes no no company's perfect you know no companies hit home runs every time you know if you hit a single double sometimes you strike out but it you know it's it's it's very different for everyone especially in the toy industry well real quick bobby if the if the [01:29:27] Speaker 1: garrison cavalry is one of the figures that's shipping before chinese new year just not i need six [01:29:34] Speaker 3: um i know we're at the hour and a half mark which is where i like to keep it so i'm going to read some super chats and then throw to both you guys the final question of the night so uh real quick uh tree theodore thank you for the super chat he says a lobster for tony happy to see all three of you healthy thank you tree appreciate that uh then we have here we have world made of cardboard uh he says same for me when i worked at toys r us in the 90s they put me in bicycles i knew everything about every toy on aisle 7c but they put me in bicycles yeah exactly they have this allergy to people who actually are passionate about the things they do at a company uh maybe maybe they're [01:30:13] Speaker 1: scared of someone putting a childhood drawing into a toy line can i can i interrupt for one second just [01:30:21] Speaker 2: because i have to address something sure flood burger i didn't send the letter so i can say whatever i want that's the difference what is flood burger saying he was trying to be snarky uh wasn't understanding [01:30:37] Speaker 3: or they weren't understanding let's see uh anthony whitehead thank you for the super chat he says for you guys speaking the truth you are welcome sir and then here i have uh let's see jeremy uh i think i can get to your super chat or no maybe i can't uh jeremy let me see if i can pull this up here man uh here we go it has been real screwy tonight on the super chat stuff so apologies um the [01:31:07] Speaker 2: at least at least our our internet is working you know at least we're professional [01:31:14] Speaker 3: uh jeremy thank you for the super chat he says three of my favorite youtubers all in one place hashtag action force af and uh let's see then we we have uh right here we have uh andrew alvarez thank you for the five dollar super chat he says has anyone here seen the figurehead review of the haslab sentinel having ratcheted hips and knees um i have heard that there is a ratchet inside but i've also been hearing that that ratchet is ineffective uh because all these all these sentinels are falling over um you've seen the videos you've seen the photos i'm sure they've got i'm sure they've got sentinels now marionetted on strings and they're dancing on tick tock at this point they're so loosey-goosey um all right i think we are thank men thank you for the super chat he said wow it's amazing what a conversation about the current toy industry sounds like coming from someone who knows what they're talking about here you go bobby um all right um retroblasting jeff has a question can bobby tell us what black magic he used to get sergeant slaughter into action force [01:32:22] Speaker 2: i just reached out to him oh well actually what i did was if you're not familiar with horcruxes well no listen it was like it was a little it was a little more than that um i was able to get uh his agent's contact information and you know i i just i just reached out to him you know just the way i saw it like look no one was doing anything with him um you know i love sergeant slaughter i'm a huge sergeant slaughter fan not as just a you know wrestler and a gi joe it's just i he's he was awesome part of my part of my childhood and you know i you know i action force will always be sort of classified no pun intended as as a gi joe rip offline and i listen i get it and i'm kind of okay with it you know why because it's like that's who i'm making this stuff for is for gi joe fans like if i you know if i were making a superhero line like i guess you could say well oh you're you're a marvel legends ripoff well yeah i'm making superheroes yes i'm making military figures and yes i want this to be marketed for joe fans but also lovers of toys and other other fans as well um so i knew like okay well getting sergeant slaughter well that that might be kind of one of those things where it's like all right well you're really you know you're really trying to like copy gi joe but listen kirk bezigian who's one of the godfathers of gi joe a good friend of mine he wrote the the playbook and even just write the playbook he wrote a perfect like super bowl winning playbook so why would i not like copy that playbook like he got sergeant slaughter did pretty well for the company so i said how could it hurt to ask and uh i you know i got his agent's contact and i just reached out to him i said you know i'm starting this new line this and that and it's like it was you know when i think about it it's like action force was in such infancy at the at that time and you know he was like okay you know what's what's your you know what's your pitch i'll i'll gladly you know throw it to serge and see what he thinks and i remember i spent like a week putting a deck together and i just pitched for how he could be incorporated into action force and i i also wanted to be something where he wasn't like his wrestling persona or the gi joe persona he i wanted him to be something different i wanted him to be this this new iteration of sergeant slaughter and i think he really liked that he was something different so he came back and he was like i love it and you know we you know there was very very little negotiation back and forth as far as monetary i was just starting and he understood that so but i wanted to make sure that you listen sarja's you know he's worth his weight in gold you know he's an icon so we found something that was mutually beneficial for all of us and we signed the contract and i was like holy crap like did i really just get sergeant slaughter and then it's like i do have been doing everything with his agent and then all of a sudden like we jumped on a call and i'm like talking to sergeant he's like loving what i put together and you know i sent him comics and he knew things from the storyline i'm just like this is like amazing so you know that's kind of how the sarge thing happened um you know is incredibly easy even you know even like you just have to have the outlet like if you could just get to the person like i know like in this day and age like you know a celebrity on social media it's you know some people are just hard to get to like if i wanted you know uh i'm trying to think is someone ridiculous if i wanted christian bale on the line i'm pretty sure it would be hard to get christian bale right answer back you'd have to go like his agent's assistance laundry folder to like then then you know kind of work your way up i'm not saying that sarge isn't as big as christian bell i think it's just different levels you know right levels to this stuff even like like tim kennedy the day i like the day i reached out to tim kennedy now a friend of mine also kind of sent a message the same day i sent a message but tim kennedy's guy like got back to me within like two hours and he's like sure when do you want to set up a call we set up a call and i didn't expect him to be on the call all of a sudden i'm talking to tim kennedy i'm like what this is awesome i've watched your fights you're awesome and i was like trying not to like like geek out about it um but it's like just getting you know if you have the means just to reach out to people you know sometimes you'll get people to answer you sometimes you won't listen i've been trying to find a publisher to take over the comics i can't tell you how many publishers i reached out to you that have not gotten back to me so it's like you know hit or miss but if you don't take the chance you won't know right with sarge the worst he could have said well sorry we're not interested or yeah we're gonna work out say you know say the money thing didn't happen so i was trying to get my hopes up and then we signed the contract and i'm like let's go mm-hmm so uh scott [01:37:20] Speaker 3: hughes thank you for the super chat he said word to your moms bobby came to drop bombs and uh and then uh let's see uh here we have another one from world made of cardboard uh he says thank you guys for a great evening even my wife wants a desert rat figure waiting for the pre-order and venkman says uh also unlike a certain someone who talks in circles and not going anywhere listening to bobby talk about the real toy industry was quite refreshing i agree with you sir and so the final question of the night uh for both of you um i confronted an attitude that seems pretty pervasive um not limited to one individual a number of individuals have sort of presented this idea that this is the way it is and companies don't change so we need to just get happy about it like things don't change so what i wanted to ask tony as a as a collector is what would you like to see change about the way big toy companies do business if anything and then i'd like to then throw it to bobby to say what do you what does bobby what do you think is possible what do you think these companies do have the potential to do adjust juke shift so tony take it away well first of all i'm really i'm really [01:38:43] Speaker 1: glad you brought this up because it's that that's one of the key questions i kind of wanted to address while we're on the stream today and that's around the whole the statements that well this is the way it is and it's just and that's the way it is it doesn't mean that things can't and should not change for for the better um and they most likely will but i also look at it as though will it be better for the corporation from the business point of view or it'd be better for the collect the market's probably going to change and it may not necessarily get better for us it may actually get worse so i want to i suppose my final comment is to the audience themselves and that is it may this may be the way it is at the moment it may change but why why are some of you choosing to side with the big corporation as opposed to your fellow collector becoming united front speak speak your mind and you know the customer should always be right but it's not necessary that doesn't happen when we all keep accepting things for being the way they are so [01:40:09] Speaker 3: i hope that makes sense it totally makes sense and and james seems to agree with you he says u.s steel chose not to change ask pittsburgh how long that took to resolve itself yeah yeah um so so bobby being in the middle of this and having been in the middle of this for a long time and and still actively making toys the manufactured way overseas you got your own action figure lines with a very prominent trademark right now um what do you think is possible uh for the for the toy industry to do to change and improve some of these situations if anything or maybe big toy can't change i don't know what i'm just trying to get your perspective on it your opinion nothing that you you know we we all agree that we're all using learned opinions here based on the facts we know so please go ahead yeah but [01:40:59] Speaker 2: it my opinions are facts michael come on um i i think it's tough because i think there's a lot a lot to that question um there's i think the machine is kind of too big to to really change now i i'm i agree you've said it before the thing tony said before vote with your wallet i'm in full agreement of that you know why because it's like i've seen firsthand it's like my first kickstarter failed people voted with their wallet like you know people vote with their wallets with a lot of kickstarters and crowdfunding stuff the voting with the wallet only affects smaller tier companies um because you know why because it's almost like what i said about you need the whole sample size if you get 30 percent to vote with their wallet you're never going to get a hundred percent that's why like strikes when companies go on strike it's so hard to pull off because there's always going to be that one guy that's like ah but i really need this job right right no man this company can't do it if we all walk what are they going to do they can't survive so it's like it's all or nothing you know and yes a 30 is a big hit but i don't know if that 30 is really big enough like what is that that's the thing what is big enough what's the big you know and at that point it's like you know if if we start voting with their wallet is it going to change or like is it going to change for the better or is it just going to say all right well we're just not going to make that anymore you know that's what i don't that's what i don't have the answer to because i've seen hasbro cancel lines that were still making millions of dollars but had dropped from the previous year but we're still making over forecast but they looked at it like oh that's on the downtrend we should probably pull the plug on it and they pull the plug on it so i'm making millions of dollars so um you know that that sort of thing it's like well you know how long do you want to ride it out for and at that point it's like all right well i would have liked to have seen them take that line that i was talking about i'm not gonna say what line it was but take a year off rejigger it deal with the over ordering that you that happened in in with series one two and then get it back out because i think the kids still loved it was a kid line and i think the kids still want more of that we just have to tweak things a little bit but they never want to just like tweak things they want to just what's the next thing what's the next thing what's the right you know and um um so you know again i don't i don't know if if that's if that's what's gonna work i know that as far as you know things that need to change are definitely world issues i don't want to get political i'm just saying that right you know my buddy sent me like a video he's a big conspiracy theorist and this guy was talking about all the by the end of the year the u.s economy is going to collapse and hope you're you you are can live in your house for the next year and have everything because everything's good and i'm like dude i hope this isn't true i got a business like right i have to survive so i'm just like if that happens that's really bad uh you know i think it's bad for everyone i i think we're too big for it to get to that point but something needs to change we need to get we need to get out of this code with stuff we need to get back to making things you know jobs people going back to work let's get back to you know truckers trucking you know there's sixty thousand less truckers which is a big another big distribution issue you know this whole la port thing you got to address that thing like listen man that should be like agenda number one to address that stuff you got to fix our infrastructure in order for for the toy industry to to continue to survive that world stuff stuff bigger than us right than collectors bigger than getting your toys guys there's much bigger like issues in the world i know like but i need my i need my figures i need i gotta get my stuff ah listen you just have to get things better like right that sort of stuff so once we get kind of out of this this crap that we've been in and maybe things get back to normalcy what's what what are going to be the residual effects you know they're talking about like this shipping issue like i'm looking at the shipping stuff and you know i watch videos all the time about people explaining this shipping issue stuff and some guys are saying it'll be fixed by february some guys are like it won't be fixed till the end of 22. some people are like it'll go into 23 and i'm like this is bad right options are bad so um you know you got to fix that that first and foremost um you know because i think in the long run it's gonna start hurting smaller companies you know me and who knows if it'll trickle up to stuff like neca you know i don't know um you know but uh yeah i it's things that need to change world stuff needs to change i as far as like me personally what i would like to see change i would like to see a company and i'm just going to use hasbro as an example just because i work there and and i i got to see this stuff firsthand they do not remember that they make toys right i would sit in these meetings with the the ceos upper management people it was just about what what's the what's the the dollar amount what's the quantity what's this what's that because they have to you know argue to shareholders and you know talk about bottom line and stock prices and this and that and it's like did they forget we work at a toy company right fun like i should go into a meeting and i should pitch something to the ceo and he should like be amazed and laugh like a perfect example i was in a meeting and we were trying to pitch one a new legends role play like one-to-one item and i'm gonna say what character was but it was a mask and we weren't sure if we're gonna you know it was a weird way of doing the mask and i remember being out in the hallway and they're like all right well you're gonna put this mask on and we want you to run into the you know into the the conference room and jump into a superhero pose a sign this character has a signature pose and jump in there and pitch the mask with the mask on and i remember coming in and i leapt into the air little conference room did my thing pitched it and i remember he just sat there and like he caught like a little smirk but i'm just like dude the rest of the room is like laughing or at least i remember we work at a toy company this guy's like what are we selling bars of soap widgets well yeah what are we selling here i don't [01:47:55] Speaker 3: know yeah it's because ceos make the ceos make the round they just they just move from company to company and all the corporations use the same playbook so to them it's all the same yeah and you know i told the guy one time at work i asked him he was new and i knew higher but he was a veteran uh corporate guy and i went in to meet him one day and i said uh you know hey man i said so what are your interests outside of work what do you what do you do outside of work and he's like he's an older guy like he was a lot older than me you know so he had a wife and kids and all that kind of stuff and he's like hmm you know i i that's a hard question to answer and i i i looked right at him and i'm like do you just go home at night to a four walled beige room with a chair in the middle and then sit and wait for the work day to start the next and then just get up and like is that and that that was my working theory for a long time even before i met that guy for many people in corporations like they have no imagination they're just there to literally count widgets and they have this playbook that they all worship like it's you know gospel and they're all of the same mind and they're all very uptight boring people like they're very boring peop boring people like they they don't have any interest they don't have anything that energizes them they don't they don't get humor they don't get you know i mean they're they're the people that made american idol really popular here like they're they're the people that watched reality tv like popcorn because they just they could be sold anything i mean they've got as long as it's not too weird like it's got to be very pedestrian it's pedestrian and it's not threatening or makes them think in any way you can you can sell that stuff to those types oh it's like listening to 500 000 soccer moms all in one building just all the time just anyway um so i went off on a rant there sorry about that um all right well so i just hope that if if [01:50:05] Speaker 2: this company gets gets big and super super successful my two good friends right here if i start to become a corporate they come here and they drag me out in the parking lot and they beat the crap out of me and say remember where you came from oh i will i will i'll do it with humor first so the [01:50:23] Speaker 3: first stage is the first stage is humor because if you lost your sense of humor we know you you're too far gone and you need to be drastic it's like oh god he's lost a sense of humor the corporate monsters got him um it's like that game and star trek the next generation they've got it on his eyes and now he's addicted to it um we will i promise we will excellent um all right gentlemen thank you for joining me tonight before we go uh tony uh please tell everybody where they can find you and what's coming up next on [01:50:53] Speaker 1: your channel you're on mute tony you're muted you're muted excuse me i had a cat wandering around here before me now i mean stuff so um yeah you can uh you can find me just type in analog toys on youtube uh we're on facebook instagram uh i do a lot of videos about um mainly vintage toys i do do videos about modern stuff but if it's modern it's going to be about a retro property as well so um i've got a video about um an incredible hulk figure that bobby valor might have designed i've got that coming out it'll be on patreon today um and um yeah other than that you can um yeah you see me hanging around valiverse a [01:51:40] Speaker 3: fair bit i kind of work for part-time for this guy here uh all right and uh thank you desert rat and uh bobby where can everybody find you and uh and just tell everybody a little bit about you know what you're [01:51:56] Speaker 2: up to right now yeah uh you could uh search valiverse on facebook instagram youtube uh i have not posted anything on youtube for a while and i'm sorry about that but i have like a list on my phone of videos that i'm going to get to i have one that i'm getting some i need to get some video clips for uh to do a new behind the scenes production video of what goes on in china on how how toys are made so uh now i'm going to put that video together also it's like you know this is all just me so it's like i have to put the videos together maybe one of you fine gentlemen has someone that does good editing videos and can put videos together for me um i know my buddy south from two cents toys i want to yes to do that job also but yeah it's like you know i just need more time to to get to this stuff but i'm gonna be utilizing the youtube channel way more often now um but yeah facebook instagram youtube valiverse.com the comics are up uh issues one through five of action force action force mission files uh the comics are also available on digital format on uh on kindle books uh on on amazon so if you know if you're overseas or if you like reading digitally the the books are available uh as as well um what else uh stuff is going to be shipping from the factory very very soon i'm very excited about that you know and then there's gonna be news about series two coming out i did you know uh let the cat out of the bag about some of it um but uh first and foremost it's it's so important to get this stuff in everyone's hands i can't wait um you know no one wants it in their hand in your hands more than i do um so uh i got big things planned for for this company and this this line um so as long as you guys keep loving it uh keep making [01:53:39] Speaker 3: it but um other than that that's about it um yeah all right well uh michael hinkson and lio convoy get the last two super chats of the evening michael hinkson thank you he says if you want to see how a ceo can screw up a company look at how the ceo of jc penny almost killed it in 2012 by changing how the company operated very true and lio thank you for the super chat he says i'll also buy horrifying lion masks for michael and tony so the beating traumatizes bobby as well amazing and with that thank you everybody for joining us tonight i hope this was informative i see in the comments that a lot of you are are saying that you got a lot of good information out of this as far as how the toy industry works so thanks to both of my guests for taking the time to do this really appreciate it and with that i hope everybody has a great rest of your either monday as in the case of tony or sunday evening in the case of most of us here in the in the other side of the planet um and we'll see you on the next uh videos and in bobby's case we'll see you in action figure manufacturing land so um everybody we'll talk to you later thanks for joining us bye everyone